Welcome, colleagues.
This is meeting 14 of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development, on Thursday, February 14, 2008.
Today we will continue to look at our study on Afghanistan. Actually, we'll return to our ongoing study of Afghanistan.
In our first hour we will hear from Paul Manson, the president, and Alain Pellerin, the executive director of the Conference of Defence Associations; and from the
Francophone Research Network on Peace Operations, Marc André Boivin,
deputy director. Appearing as an individual, we have Seddiq Weera, senior advisor, Independent National Commission on Strengthening Peace, and senior policy advisor to the Minister of Education in the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.
In our second hour--he's with us here today--we will hear from retired General Lewis MacKenzie, appearing as an individual; and from Strategic Forecasting Inc., Kamran Bokhari, director of Middle East analysis.
We welcome you here. We look forward to your testimony. I'm not certain if all of you have appeared before our committee in the past. It's fairly simple. We listen to you, and then you, hopefully, will answer some of the questions our committee may have.
Mr. Manson, you have approximately seven minutes, I believe. Then we'll go into the first round of questioning.
Thank you.